Today’s Solutions: May 18, 2024

Climate Action

What is Climate Action? Climate Action is humanity's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance our planet's resilience against climate change. From adaptation to mitigation, at The Optimist Daily you will learn about the most recent positive news stories and solutions targeting climate change and other environmental issues.

Climate Anxiety

Coping with climate anxiety through connection

“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny, affects all indirectly.”  — Martin Luther King Jr.  Constant news updates are inescapable. Wildfires Read More...

Graduation

Be bored, then get going

“Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination.”  — Arthur Schopenhauer Congratulations, graduating classes of 2022! Being young, with a freshly minted degree, you probably feel invincible, like you can do anything.  There’s a lightness and exuberance in your step, and you are full Read More...

Tel Aviv e-scooter

Tel Aviv is becoming an e-scooter city

No two cities are the same, and each one has its own particular changes to make to achieve its climate goals. New York is making plans to become “spongier” to handle excess water. Panama City, Florida is transforming into a tree city, planting over 100,000 new trees, and Tel Aviv, Israel aims Read More...

Paris traffic noise

How Paris is quieting its noise pollution

Those of us that live in a city love it for the layers and layers of life, light, and vibrancy that come from a busy and populous environment. While it is an exciting and bustling place to live, we can also pay a price living in a city when, say, we’re just trying to go to sleep.  Noise Read More...

Bug Food

Insects and lab-grown meat could reduce environmental impact by 80 percent

We at The Optimist Daily have written a lot before about the environmental benefits of lab-grown meat and insects as an alternative protein source, and the body of research for this cultural and scientific protein shift keeps growing.  A new study published in Nature Food found that replacing Read More...

Plogging

5 cities celebrating the earth by “plogging”

If case you haven’t heard, “plogging” combines physical exercise and cleaning up your town and environment. It started in Sweden — “plogging” being a portmanteau of the Swedish phrase “plocka upp,” meaning to “pick up,” and jogging — and the craze has caught on around the Read More...

Chemical ban

The EU is going on a cleanse with the world’s biggest chemical ban

From what we now know, the fact that something is convenient doesn’t at all mean it’s safe. Chemical pollution from everyday products is considered responsible for a host of problems from the endangerment of marine life to declining human fertility rates and many other health Read More...

bee in tall grass

More than 25 cities in Wisconsin to participate in No Mow May

No Mow May is an initiative that encourages gardeners and homeowners to let their lawns grow wild in the interest of boosting biodiversity and supporting important pollinator populations, which are in decline. It originally began in the UK, but in the spring of 2020, caught on in Appleton, Read More...

Holy Island Wales

Could tidal energy be the new wave of renewables?

Time and tide wait for no man, so the saying goes. Sailors used to have to sail with the inevitable changing of the tides and were subject to the whims of the sea. Now, in Wales, humans will soon use the sea’s reliable indifference to us to generate energy.  Construction has begun on the Read More...

Solar farms in Fukushima, with mountains in the background

How Fukushima is rebranding as a haven for renewable energy

A year after Fukushima’s nuclear disaster, the regional government set a goal of meeting all of its energy demands with renewables by 2040. Now — 11 years after the tsunami — solar farms, green hydrogen, and micro-grids are ushering in a new energy future for the region. From nuclear Read More...